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No, because the methods are in the present, but the goal is in the future. Something in the future cannot act on something in the present; it is cause and effect turned upside down. The method could holify the goal, but that doesn't make sense.

Also, to kill one human in order to save a hundred thousand is morally wrong, because each of these one hundred thousand humans only dies once, and there is no frame of reference - no objective observer - where you could stack up those deaths; that means that if you kill one person, then resurrect him, then kill him again, and do that a hundred thousand times, it is a hundred thousand times worse than killing him once; however, to kill a hundred thousand different humans is just as bad as killing one human. It's insane, but it is true.

However, if you killed Hitler at age 4, you could possibly prevent a lot of deaths. If you could choose any moment in Hitler's life, why go to a period where he's amassed followers? History never should have mentioned him at all, if this was a rational universe.

--------------------It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Hitler was a product of that period's politics in Germany. Without Hitler Germany would have still been vulnerable to facism.

--------------------"A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions." ― Carlos Castaneda

The first precept of the moral law (Natural Law) is to do good and avoid doing evil.

It is a violation of this law, and therefore unjust, to perform an evil action to achieve a good end.

Let's say for example that a terrorist was holding one hundred people hostage and threatening to kill them. Lets also say that we were holding the terrorist's ten year old daughter. One might say that it would be OK for us to start torturing the little girl as a means of convincing the terrorist to give up; the pain she suffers is negligible compared to the value of the lives of the 100 people who will die otherwise. This however would not be acceptable because it would be using an evil means to a good end. It is also important to note as someone said earlier that we are bound by time and can only act in the now. We can look into the future and speculate that A will happen if we do B, but we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. Perhaps the terrorist will watch his little girl be tortured and still kill all the hostages.

There are however situations which arise where a given act will have both good and bad consequences. In these cases the act is morally acceptable provided that the evil consequences are not desired, but are merely tolerated, and also provided that the good consequences are proportionally greater than the evil consequences.

For example. A terrorist has hijacked a plane and has radioed his intention to fly it into a large office building where 10 thousand people work. An F-16 intercepts the hijacked plane and destroys it with a missile, killing the terrorist and two hundred passengers moments before it would have impacted the building.

This act is morally acceptable because the desired good is saving the lives of the ten thousand people in the building. The tolerated bad side effect is the destruction of the people on the plane. This bad side effect is tolerated, not intended; if there were any possible way to save the ten thousand in the building without killing the people on the plane, then that way would have been followed. However the F-16 pilot only had two choices: let the plane hit the building, or destroy it. The ten thousand lives saved are a proportionally greater good than the 201 and one lost. Therefore the act is morally good.

Actions like these are governed by the "Principle of the Double Effect" and the "Principle of Proportionality."

A common ethical error is to apply the principle of proportionality to allow for an evil means to a good end. This however violates the first precept of the moral law which says do good and avoid doing evil. The principle of proportionality only applies to situations already governed by the principle of the double effect.